I don’t have any, yet.

And I won’t.

New Year resolutions have never particularly appealed to me.  I can’t say that I’ve ever actually made any, that I recall – and, if I did, I’m sure I broke them.

What I do have, on the other hand is intentions.  My intentions have little to do with whether it’s a new year or not.

These intentions are personal – and subject to change.

One of my intentions is to continue regular physical exercise. For exercise, 2014 was a pretty good year.  The only extended break from hitting the gym was during our 8 weeks trip to the Rocky Mountain states, but we got in a fair amount of exercise on our hikes.

I would have liked to have lost more weight, but 10 lbs. and one size smaller in pants, is progress in the right direction.

And I feel better – a result, I’m sure, from both the exercise and the reduced weight.

Do you make New Year Resolutions?

Whatever our future holds,
Surprises we’ll see as it unfolds

Dire predictions seldom true.
Their authors likely come to rue
So be of good cheer –
and have a Happy Year!

On the right is a picture  of our barely used artificial tree with all the ornaments removed, getting ready for storage until next year.

All of the original lights are still on the tree, still plugged in.

Pretty sad, isn’t it?

During the 2013 holidays, part of one strand of lights went out.  We added an  extra strand of 50 lights to make up for it.

More lights went out after we set the tree up this season.

Needing another strand of 50 lights, we bought three.  Fortunately.

A day or so after adding one of them, more of the original lights went out.  Another box of 50 lights were opened and added to the tree.

The evening of December 30th, we noticed more lights out.  We didn’t bother to open the third box.

The next day – yesterday – our Christmas ornaments were taken down and stored.  After taking off the extra strands that had been added, there was half a strand lit at the top and the same amount lit at the bottom

Our artificial tree is no longer “pre-lit.”  It was a bit of a chore, but all of the lights that came with it were removed before storing the tree.  It turned out to be easier just to cut the wires into smaller sections rather than try to unwind the light strands from the trees.

My suspicion is that the light strands were damaged during the process of winding, wrapping and attaching them to the tree.   I did discover one place were a wire was actually broken.

The tree, itself, is actually in pretty good shape.  We’ll probably be using for several more years, string electric lights onto it the “old-fashioned” way.

BLUE BIRD OF  HAPPINESS,

MY ARSE!

Do I  look happy??
It’s  Friggin’ Freezing.
There’s  snow up my arse,
all the food’s covered with 3 feet of this white crap,
and you want ME to sing?
Piss  Off!!  Next  year, I’m flyin’ to Jamaica and smoking dope!!

….. post “borrowed” from Ice Age Now blog, August 12, 2014

This  Prescription Coffee Mug at Zazzle by Carla Rolfe is pretty cool!

While sitting at the computer sipping my first cup of the day, I thought I’d share it. 

Damaged.

The photo sold at auction April 5, 2000 for a realized price of $70,500.¹

Christie’s Sale 9330, Lot 250

Lot Description:

DOROTHEA LANGE
Damaged Child, Shacktown, Elm Grove, Oklahoma
Gelatin silver print. 1936. With faint Resettlement Administration number in pencil on the verso.
7.5/8 x 7.3/8in. (19.4 x 18.7cm.) Framed.

This iconic image of a child, titled “Damaged Child,” was taken in August 1936 in a Oklahoma “shacktown.”

No plumbing nor electricity.  Homes built from salvaged scraps.  Polluted water and no facilities for trash and other waste.

Shanty towns, also known as shacktowns, sprang up near many cities during the Great Depression.  Sometimes called Hooverville, Little Oklahoma or Okieville, these settlements often grew on empty land, unrecognized officially by local authorities, but often tolerated or ignored out of necessity.

The child in the image was one of the many displaced by the droughts and economic hard times of the 30s.  She is described by the photographer, Dorothea Lange, as “possibly retarded, as well as abused, and made an outcast because she was different.”²

Beyond the general sympathy Lange possessed for her subjects, she may have felt a deeper personal connection to this particular girl: at the age of seven, Lange herself had contracted polio, which caused her foot to become limp. Here, perhaps even more than in her many other astonishing photographs of the Great Depression, Lange’s remarkable talent is her ability to create photojournalistic images which “show an empathy so deep that it raises them to the level of art.”³

While it seems that the child’s left cheek may be a bit swollen, Lange’s title for the photo and her short description are likely very subjective rather than factual.  Lange was a photographer documenting, through her photographs, conditions of the migrants and others.  However, she also had a background as a portrait photographer and this image is very much a portrait, probably intentionally, likely with the thought that that it might be used to convey a message if it turned out.  Also, I know of at least two instances where, in later years, subjects of her photos strongly disagreed with the description that she had jotted down when she took the images.

The title “Damaged Child” seems overdetermined, as does the portrait in some ways.  The ragged clothes falling off the scrawny body, the uncombed hair, the grim background…. Haven’t we seen this before?  In Jacob Riis’s turn-of-the-century photographs of New York City slums?  In John Thomson’s similar portraits from Glasgow and London? This boyish girl may be particularly bold, with her direct stare into the camera and black marks for eyes, but not unique.  Of course, her typicality is part of the social message of the photograph: there are many just like her and we shouldn’t turn away or move on.

What seems, then, most surprising in the photograph is the positioning of her hands.  Hidden and held close, the girl’s hands suggest a shyness and self-protection that the rest of the image belies.  It is as if metaphorically she is refusing to ask for a handout.  Gordon tells us that Lange moved slowly as she set up for portraits, fussing with the camera and lighting until her subjects relaxed.  But this girl never relaxed.  And Lange, betraying her background in studio portraiture, positions her beautifully, slightly off center against the textured backdrop.  Both photographer and model seem to know exactly what to do. ⁴

Many of the displaced lacked the funds to even join the great westward migration down Route 66 and other highways.  In Oklahoma City, many of these people ended up in the Elm Grove shacktown.

Who were these people?  Where were they from and what was their life like before coming to Elm Grove?  What happened to them after their encounter with the government photographer and after the depression ended?

¹ Christie’s Auction Results

²‘Damaged Child’ – Manila Bulletin Picture Perfect 

³American Photographs, Heyman, p. 25

⁴ Migrant Child – Victoria Olsen

I have been working with some images from the Great Depression by photographer Dorothea Lange.  This is the first video I have come across that features her.

Dorothea Lange’s stirring images of migrant farmers and the unemployed have become universally recognized symbols of the Great Depression. Later photographs documenting the internment of Japanese Americans and her travels throughout the world extended her body of work. Watch the video to hear Lange discuss how she began her documentary projects for the Farm Security Administration, and learn how she felt about some of her assignments and subjects. (Getty Museum on YouTube)

I’ve had several discussions about the coming winter over the last week or so.  Most have heard the talk and predictions that the coming winter will be a bad one.

Talk is talk, but how often do people take action?

One thing we planned for this fall was getting our chimney cleaned.  Karen talked to the chimney sweep company yesterday and they’re probably not going to get to us until the beginning of December.  Karen set up an appointment.  They might be able to get to us before that. Might.

The woman she talked to said that it’s been crazy busy for their business, a lot more than normal.

The last time they were this crazy busy was in the fall and early winter of 1999.

Back during the run-up to Y2K.

Remember Y2K?

I guess people were getting ready just in case the power went away because some computers wouldn’t compute properly after the date change to 2000.

We had a pretty cold and snowy winter last year – accompanied by a lot of power outages.  Many people had to resort to using their fireplaces more than normal and, for some, normal fireplace use was none at all.  That was pretty much us most years.

Given the experience of last winter and the predictions for the upcoming winter, it seems that more than just a few are taking action to prepare.

Current predictions from Weather Bell.

The numbers on the image on the left are the departure from normal in degrees Celsius.  To get the departure from normal in Fahrenheit, multiply by 1.8, which means that the dark blue area is projected to average 7.2°F below normal.

The percentage on the chart on the right is simply a projection of the percent of normal snowfall that will be seen.

Mary Lorraine Thibodeau Marlow (16 Dec 1924 – 18 October 2014)

Karen said it best in a post on her blog.

The photo is by our daughter, Melanie.